A mother in China's Shaanxi province donated her uterus to her 22-year-old daughter in the country’s first successful womb transplant, a Chinese newspaper reported on Thursday. The daughter was born without a vagina and uterus but had functioning ovaries, Huashang Daily reported. Doctors at Xijing Hospital in Xian prepared for the surgery for two years and practised the procedure on goats, which had a similar uterine anatomy to humans, the report said. READ MORE: China to perform record number of organ transplants, despite ban on harvesting from executed prisoners The woman’s 43-year-old mother said she was “willing to give up my life to give my daughter a complete life”. The daughter had surgery to create a vagina in April and August and had four embryos frozen for future implantation, the report said. The transplant operation involved 38 doctors with 11 areas of expertise, and took 14 hours with the help of robotic surgical tools. The mother only lost 10 millilitres of blood during the procedure and was recovering well. The daughter was in stable condition but would need to stay in hospital for some weeks, the report said. The four frozen embryos would be implanted in the daughter’s uterus after she had fully recovered from the operation, possibly next year. Xijing Hospital gynaecology and obstetrics chief Chen Biliang was quoted as saying that the mother was still young and her uterus was healthy, raising the chances of a successful pregnancy and delivery. The uterus would be removed after the daughter gave birth so she would not have to take immunosuppressants for the rest of her life. READ MORE: Hong Kong father of three finally gets life-saving transplant after 90pc of heart failed two months ago There have been 11 known womb transplants around the world, most of them in Sweden. One woman in the Scandinavian country who received a womb transplant gave birth to a son last year. It is illegal to use surrogate mothers to carry out pregnancies in China. Gong Xiaoming, a gynaecologist and founder of Obgy.cn, said the success of the transplant was good news for those who were born without a uterus or had it removed because of a tumour or postpartum haemorrhage but still wanted to have a child of her own. Although such transplants are not banned in China, Gong said it would be years before the operations would become widely available across the country. “Kidney and liver transplant techniques have been highly refined because such cases are life-threatening, whereas the cause for a uterus transplant is infertility. It still need years of exploration,” Gong said.